The attempted murder, the act itself? It was a blur the day it happened and would remain so thirty years later.

Instead, the hours leading up to that blur would be forever preserved as vivid snapshots, rich in detail and horrifying in hindsight.

Marilyn used to wonder if this was just the brain’s well-intentioned way of protecting her from pain. To be fair, it made sense. By having to not deal with the details of her mentally ill mother deliberately trying to murder her as a child, then she should have been capable of a lot more as an adult.

Maybe she would have remembered her lines in one take instead of twenty, or forty. Maybe it would have helped with the little things, like changing her bed sheets every two weeks instead of every four months. Maybe for a hoot, she would have rinsed her dinner plates before putting them in the sink instead of leaving them under the bed. Pee-yew.

Maybe she would have taken the proper dosages of pills instead of always running out. Maybe she wouldn’t have taken them one after the other the way she did, especially for silly reasons. Brutal never-ending press junkets. Smiling while crowds tore at her clothes, grabbed her ass, and ripped out her diamond earrings. To get some sleep.

Instead, the lack of details surrounding that single life-ruining act threw her small set of vivid snapshots into sharp relief. From morning to when the fifth Nembutal finally kicked in at night, she shuffled through them, over and over. She would occasionally pause on a shot to consider a detail she may have previously overlooked, always moving on to the next shot with a disappointed sigh.

This single act would end up stealing countless hours of her life, especially the ones where she was needed on set. At best, she could get this endless shuffle to run in the background, but only if she was doing something she sincerely loved.

Still, it didn’t matter if her physical body was drinking screwdrivers with Pulitzer Prize winners, laughing with Whitey until it cried, performing lines from ‘Anna Christie’ for Lee, giving toys and kisses at almost every California orphanage, giving an acceptance speech at the Golden Globes, or even in Joe’s arms as it basked in the afterglow.

Even then, her agonizing search for what she could have done that day to turn her mother into a stranger would be in mid-shuffle.

Here is what she learned too late.

It happened on her sixth birthday.

Not that you would have known it was her birthday. Even if it wasn’t the Great Depression, Mother made barely enough to cover the basics. There was no wiggle room for celebration in the budget jar, which was fine with Marilyn.

She just wished Mother would stop being so angry about it.

“I can’t afford to live much less buy you a birthday cake. The best I can maybe do is stick a candle in your scoop of ice cream,” Gladys said flatly, shoving two threadbare towels into a diaper bag. She pulled her last pack of Lucky Strikes out of her apron pocket. She started to pull her next-to-last cigarette out but then hesitated midway. Closing the pack, she roughly shoved it back into her apron.

Gladys continued with her packing, her flat voice now sporting a definite chip.

“I can’t remember if I told you, but the head honcho is cutting my hours in half starting next week. ‘Budget cuts’, he’s calling it. It’s more like me turning him down and those two cronies of his, cornering me in the commissary the way that they did. I may have told you about that. Just a little after-hours fun for them. Not for me, Norma Jeane. All I got out of their fun were ruined stockings that I can’t afford to replace right now.”

Her hands trembled slightly as they fumbled for a zipper.

“Typical. All of them, especially married ones. They usually have the most to hide and the best facade to help cover it all up. When they do what they want to you, not even your child starving to death in the streets will make them stop. Even a little girl like you. They would walk right over you with a smile and a cigar. Trust me on this, Norma Jeane. Only God is merciful in this miserable life.”

Marilyn watched Mother fight with the broken diaper bag zipper.

She had been ready to go hours ago, even getting up before sunrise to sew a large rip in her bathing suit. There was nothing she hated more than getting up early. In Marilyn’s opinion, doing things slowly was always better than doing them fast. For example, if she could go to school at 6 PM and not 6 AM, maybe she wouldn’t have failed the first grade.

She also didn’t want to touch Mother’s heirloom sewing basket. Touching anything that belonged to Mother was a dangerous game to play. No matter how temptingly tall her heels were or how beautiful her rosary was, getting her grubby little hands all over her nice things was akin to stealing offerings from a jealous and avenging God.

Still, she couldn’t ask Mother to help her.

Wouldn’t.

Threading the needle had been difficult enough, but the sewing itself had been a long and painful process. Even though the nasty little needle stabbed her small fingers with every other stitch at first, she diligently worked under the harsh kitchenette light. Eventually, she settled into a rhythm that almost felt like flying.

Once finished, the only way to tell that there had ever been a hole was a thin white thread, weaving steadily through the suit’s black and white horizontal stripes. She wished she could have shown Mother what she had done, all alone no less. She wondered what it’d be like if her mother praised her for a job well done before pulling her in for a hug.

It would be nice.

Mother would probably scream at her for using the heirloom sewing basket without asking first. For this blatant disrespect of other people’s property, they probably wouldn’t even go to the beach, birthday or not.

She never spoke whenever Mother went into one of her stream-of-consciousness rants, which could last for hours at different frequencies. Instead, she would usually find something to stare at in silence. She looked around for something, anything in the apartment. The problem was, everywhere she looked, Mother barged in.

Mother slapping some baloney sandwiches together in the kitchenette. Mother digging in the laundry basket for the bathing suit she wanted to wear. Mother naked and lamenting in the dusty mirror about her ruined figure.

Mother sulking as she searched the bathroom’s medicine cabinet for sunscreen. Mother slamming the medicine cabinet shut. Mother throwing the empty sunscreen bottle well across the living room. Mother fishing the bottle from behind the dead rosemary plant, a dark dry ring surrounding its cracked pot. Mother tossing the sunscreen bottle hard into the trash bin, making the many glass bottles inside clink angrily.

Once Gladys started searching for her wallet, huffing something about letting it all burn under her breath, Marilyn gave up on finding anything in the apartment to look at. Mother was going to be a minute.

Instead, she looked down at her hands. They held her sand pail’s handle in a death grip. Her sand pail had a cartoon starfish on it, with a friendly grin that immediately set her at ease. She even gave Mister Starfish a small smile in return.

“Today,” she silently resolved, “I’m going to find pretty seashells for Mama.”

The beach was cheap, with ice cream cones for a penny and free clean air. Her official birthday present was a scoop of vanilla, but the real gift had been in the waves. Los Angeles ocean water in June is always the perfect temperature. It didn’t even matter that Mother didn’t join in the fun, choosing to sit it out on the sand.

Gladys stared blankly at her laughing little girl braving the waves. She tried to recall what time the liquor store on the way home closed. Her hands were starting to shake. Norma Jeane’s squeals were so shrill.

They had been at the beach for only an hour before Gladys started to pack up. It was too bright, and her temples were starting to throb. Even in the hot California sun, her fingers felt cold. When Norma Jeane ran up loudly blathering something about glass, soaked to the bone, she winced.

“Norma, please stop talking so fast. What’s the matter? Did you step on some glass? You need to be more careful; you never listen to me about watching where you are going. ”

“No, Mama, look.”

Marilyn lifted her sand pail as high as she could. Today, she had done the impossible. The treasure Mister Starfish offered up to her mother had been well and truly earned.

Marilyn was and never would be a strong swimmer.

As a child, playing in the shallow waves always made her feel like she was tussling with a pair of extremely powerful Saint Bernard puppies. To her, they were more adorable than anything you could find in an FAO Schwarz toy catalog.

As delicious as the ice cream had been, visiting these two was her real birthday treat. Her visits had been rare as of late. Still, they didn’t begrudge her absence, running around her with big puppy smiles, their fur soft as sea foam.

She also loved floating on her back, which was equally met by a strong dislike of her feet not touching the ground. Going past the shallows scared her, but the deeper the water, the better the float.

Whenever she found herself in a wonderful lap of weightless nothingness, drifting into darker waters, she would daydream to distract herself.

For example, maybe Atlantis existed and she was a missing ocean princess.

She had probably been swaddled in seaweed the day she arrived in a huge oyster. Pink as a conch before the woman with the red hair found her. Gladys had probably been drunk at the beach after a night out with another man who would do nothing but disappoint her. Watching the sunrise sometimes made her feel better.

Gladys had probably stumbled over the huge oyster that had faithfully served the Atlantean royal family for generations as a ‘living bassinet’. The oyster had encased its’ delicate charge like a pearl as they helplessly floated through treacherous waters. Washed up on the shore, all of its’ inlaid sea glass gems ripped out and replaced with barnacles, the royal mollusk probably looked more like battered driftwood as it lay silent on the beach.

Gladys probably had an easy time of it, prying open the dying oyster. By that point, it wouldn’t have the strength to fight back. Gladys probably had wanted to get a pearl out of it and into the nearest pawn shop. Worst case, a cure for her hangover. Instead, as the oyster cracked into two useless pieces, she got her.

Maybe she used to have gills and Gladys sewed them shut. Maybe she had burned the seaweed swaddle in the wood stove. Maybe her tailbone used to be connected to an honest-to-goodness tail. Maybe Gladys chopped her missing tail off and cooked it up one night because the fridge was empty.

Maybe she even gave Marilyn a few bites, wondering how her dumb phony daughter would react if she knew that she was dining on her own tail flesh.

Maybe every day she spent being ignored or yelled at by her mother was another day where the King and Queen of Atlantis wept for their long-lost little girl. Maybe the water was salty from years of tears shed over her unknown fate.

Maybe all it took to be reunited with her real family, to restore her proper place as underwater royalty, to get away from Gladys forever, was to let the tide take her away, suck her out to sea, never to be seen again.

The two puppies would swim in anxious circles around her during these daydreams. Whenever her head began to dip below the water, one or the other would give out an anxious bark. It didn’t matter which, just as long as one of them noticed first to give the other warning. The dreamier the scenario, the more their babyish barks became little strangled screams.

There had been some close calls. Whenever the tide would begin to take her, her hair billowing beneath the waves, panic would pull her back up to the surface. Once serene acceptance became an all-consuming fear of the unknown, she never felt more alive, even while coughing her lungs out.

Only then would the puppies quiet. After lots of frantic splashing between the three of them, she would find herself shaking on the shore as the puppies shook themselves dry. Staring out at the horizon, she would dig her toes deep into the wet sand. This anchoring helped her think.

“Never again,” she would always promise herself, “not even for a million pearls on the seashell throne. Not even for an emerald sea glass tiara.”

Today on her birthday, neither the tide nor fear took her. If anything, she had felt them squirm in her tiny fists, desperately trying to break free of her control.

As soon as Gladys sat down on the shore to stare at the sea, Marilyn set out on her pretty seashell quest. If she took them home, she could clean them out and do all kinds of things. She could carry the tiniest one as a good luck charm or use any wide flat beauties as tea party plates. Some were just nice to look at, so they were used to hide water stains and scratches throughout the apartment.

Speaking of tea parties, she should invite Mister Starfish to the next one.

She planned to save the most beautiful seashell for her mother. If she cleaned the shell well enough, she could use some shiny gold thread to string it. Her mother never wore jewelry, which made Marilyn more determined to make her wear at least one piece.

A beautiful necklace, one that her mother would wear everywhere, proud to say that her darling daughter made it for her. She should come to the next tea party too, just to show off a little, for fun. She would even sit next to Mister Starfish since it’d be his first time at one of Marilyn’s parties too. They’d get on like a house on fire.

Her mother could be very funny, sometimes. 

As noble as Marilyn’s ambitions were, she quickly realized that today’s selection of seashells was terrible. All of them were too chipped, jagged, or broken, bleached or stained with oil, some of the better shells stuffed with hermit crabs, dead or annoyed.

She felt bad about flinging the dead hermit crabs back into the ocean, especially since she couldn’t help but scream whenever she found one. Even though she lost precious seconds by carrying any living ones back to shore, releasing them into the large grassy dunes made her feel better. Dunes were full of great hiding places, making it hard for greedy seagulls.

A half-hour into her birthday celebration, Marilyn anxiously glanced up at Mother, still sitting blankly on the shore. The longer it took to find even just one pretty seashell, the less the waves felt like her roly-poly and happy puppy pals. If anything, they now felt like the girls at school.

The worst ones were the hallway girls. As a group, they would stalk her through the hallways before bumping into her en masse. Sometimes, it just knocked the wind out of her. Too many times, it left her crumpled on the ground. Nothing hurt as much as their soft silvery giggles afterwards, though. Not even the kicks that some sneaked in whenever Marilyn tried to stand up too soon.

The latter injury usually came from girls who were low on the totem pole. Their self-satisfied smirks were always betrayed by nervous glances toward the rest of the girls, particularly in the ever-changing Queen Bee’s direction. From the floor, Marilyn could practically hear the anxious questions they kept silently asking themselves.

If their extra efforts went unnoticed by everyone except their victim, what was the point of doing this to a girl they barely knew?

More importantly, if they didn’t, would it be them next?

Lost in one anxious thought after another, Marilyn hadn’t noticed how far she had waded from the shore in her quest for pretty seashells.

She gasped when the water suddenly rose past her chest. As the increasingly cold waves pushed her around, she grew light-headed. She was ready to haphazardly splash her way back to dry land, thank you very much. That’s when she saw a soft glimmer in the sea.

More than seashells, Marilyn loved sea glass. Once a piece of glass reached the shore, it wouldn’t last long. This was especially so when hordes of tourists rolled in for summer vacation. These loud but usually friendly visitors weren’t shy about hauling away multiple sacks full of sea glass from this beach, each piece destined to fill a big empty jar in the master bathroom back home.

No matter how colorful, Marilyn felt like she always got sea crumbs. Tiny broken bits of glass, most no bigger than a baby’s thumbnail.

Whenever she locked herself in the bedroom during one of her mother’s episodes, Marilyn would sit on the edge of their bed and just hold the tiny glass pieces in her hand, her thumb passing smoothly over them, over and over. She handled them as gently as her mother handled the rosary during evening prayers. Despite this, each bit would be worn down to dust over a surprisingly short time.

But here, at this depth, there was lots of fresh sea glass. Their facets glittered merrily in the dark water. It reminded Marilyn of the annual downtown Christmas parade on a winter night.

She couldn’t tell what color they were, being underwater and all, but that was for her to find out. Bracing herself against the tide, she held Mister Starfish above her head and started grabbing at glass pieces with her free hand.

At first, Marilyn grabbed at pieces that glinted the prettiest underwater. After her first handful of grabs, she realized that these pieces were usually just ordinary clear glass. Some scratched her palm, leaving tiny cuts that stung every time she thrust her hand back into the water.

She wanted colored glass, glass that changed color when held up to the light, glass that would glow like gems in her sand pail, lighting up her mother’s face. Determined, she waded deeper.

The scratches on her hand were raw, red, and now excruciatingly itchy. Such tiny cuts, yet they refused to let her concentrate at all. As water lapped at the bottom of her chin, she started getting light-headed again.

She tried to take a deep breath but swallowed saltwater instead. The briny bitterness of it tasted like body odor.

The disgusting swallow was followed by a sudden sharp pain in her throat. She immediately assumed she had accidentally swallowed a piece of glass. As her vision blurred, she didn’t know what would happen, but she could already imagine it in crystal clear clarity.

The piece of glass would first cut her vocal cords in half. A clean cut, one that takes a second to start bleeding. From there on, it will slice her from throat to navel in one smooth swoop. Fresh blood will bubble into her churning lake of stomach acid, diluting the extremely erosive elixir into useless sludge.

Thanks to this gruesome sabotage, the small shard will keep all its sharp edges. Bobbing around in bloody froth, carefree as a toy boat, it will slice up the inside of her stomach. She didn’t know how many cuts it would take to kill her from the inside. Probably not much.

As she imagined this nightmarish and presumably instant death, she numbly wondered if it would get to her before the water did. After a few minutes of bobbing in listless despair, she finally realized the water would kill her first if she kept this up.

She had to go under. She could barely stand on the ground, the waves constantly pushing her off the tips of her toes. Her arm hurt from holding Mister Starfish above her head. She decided that she wanted this too much to die, took a breath, and went under.

It wasn’t even the heaviness of the water that she hated most. It was the way it stung her eyes, no matter how tightly she shut them. Her nose burned. Worst of all, she was entirely enveloped in black, seeing nothing, not even the glimmering glass that surrounded her like a minefield.

“This was a mistake,” her mind shrieked.

When she bobbed up to the surface, her cough turned into angry sobs. She started punching the water with her free hand, back to holding her pail above her hand. Even though she didn’t lose any of her loot, the pail was now also full of water. Her hoisting arm felt like it was ready to snap.

Mother would not only be bored by now, but she was also probably looking for her in the usual spots at this very moment. She would never think to look past the shallows, no matter how much of a commotion Marilyn was making out here in the deep end.

If she didn’t get back to shore soon, Mother’s rising concern would start to clash with her nicotine withdrawal. Before long, Gladys would unleash a monster that not even public opinion or intervention could hold back.

All the terrified police and firemen in town would just have to wait until she turned back into an ordinary crying woman. Only then will they take her away. They will dig their fingers into her arms, drag her if they had to, as she fights them the entire way. A fat smear of blood on the boardwalk from her scraped knee, next to the ice cream stand.

Mother probably wouldn’t even scream her name, or scream at the gawking on-lookers that she had a little girl playing in the ocean right now. That she was all she had in the world. Instead, she will just scream to be let go. Over, and over, and over, and over.

No.

She would not go back empty-handed. Mother just needed something to make her smile, whether that was a pretty necklace or giving her mother one less thing to worry about in this miserable life.

Marilyn sunk her toes, or at least the tips of them, into the ground. The mud out this far was so cold, much colder than the toasty shallows. It was nice and thick, giving her more to hang onto. She closed her eyes, took a breath, and went under again.

This time, with a plan.

When she opened her eyes, she was crouched on the ocean floor. Just above her head, the surface was a bright blur making dull wet noises. Her pair of Saint Bernard puppies sat in front of her.

Tippy, her favorite, was resting her head on Marilyn’s right knee. Intelligent soft brown eyes looked patiently into her burning blue ones. The expressive eyebrows on her sweet puppy face made Tippy look so serious. Marilyn tactfully choked back a laugh.

Muggsie, who she still loved very much, sat squarely on his bottom, air bubbles coming out of his mouth as he panted happily. He was much bigger than his sister. He didn’t know his strength sometimes. Whenever he knocked Marilyn over in the shallows, he always nuzzled her face afterward with concerned whimpers.

How could you stay mad at that? Besides, he never meant to hurt her.

Their fur, still warm and soft, rustled gently in the constant ocean current.